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The
call of the wild right in your living room: that's the Toyger with its
dramatic striped and glittered pelt. The Toyger is being bred to resemble
the tigers of the wild but in a package that fits easily into the modern
urban lifestyle with the same nature as the domestic cat. The medium-sized
cat has the rolling gait and vivid striped patterns of the wild cats without
a single drop of real tiger blood. These miniature tigers are friendly
outgoing cats that delight in being with their human companions. A young
breed, the Toyger is in development as breeders work to replicate the
pattern and colors of the tiger with ever-increasing accuracy. Tigers are an
endangered species in the wild and many of the Toyger breeders are also very
concerned about conserving the beautiful wild species that cats are created
to resemble.
People often refer to mackerel tabby cats as tigers or tiger stripes and yet
their pattern is a far cry from the bold braided patterns of the real tiger.
In the late 1980s, Judy Sugden was working to improve the clarity of the
mackerel markings in these tiger cats. She noticed that her cat Millwood
Sharp Shooter had two spots of tabby markings on the temple and realized
that this could be a key to developing a cat with the true circular pattern
on a tiger's head. The temples of domestic tabbies do not usually have such
markings on the head. Two cats that formed the cornerstone for the young
Toyger breed were a striped domestic shorthair named Scrapmetal and a
big-boned Bengal named Millwood Rumpled Spotskin. In 1993, Judy also
imported Jammu Blu, a street cat from Kashmir, India, who had all spots
between his ears rather than the regular tabby lines.
Judy embarked on her program to develop these toy tigers with a firm picture
in her mind of the characteristics that would be needed to replicate the
tiger in this miniature form: a large, long body to display the bold
vertical patterns; a stretching and branching of the tabby patterns and
rosettes found in other cats that would break up and elongate those
patterns; the circular head markings found in no other domestic cat; the
vivid glittering colors; and most importantly a laid-back temperament to
make the Toyger a delight to live with. Joining Judy early on in this
pioneering work were Anthony Hutcherson (JungleTrax) and Alice McKee (Windridge).
In 1993, TICA accepted the Toyger for Registration and in 2000 advanced them
to the new breed exhibition classes, finally granting them full recognition
as a championship cat in February 2007.
The Toyger is a friendly outgoing cat that delights in being with people.
They are highly intelligent and interactive cats that also get on well with
other pets. Their intelligence means that are easy to train and can be
taught to go for walks on a leash and to play fetch. Their laid-back
personalities make them easy to live with and mean they fit easily into the
household bringing you a sense of having truly tamed the wild.
The
Toyger coat pattern is unique in the domestic cat. Instead of the vertical
stripes of the mackerel tabby or the rounded rosettes of some spotted
tabbies, the Toyger has broken, or branched, bold vertical stripes in a
random pattern. Some of the stripes resemble rosettes that have been
stretched vertically. The goal of the facial markings is to have a circular
pattern. As with the tiger, the colors being sort are dark markings on a
vividly bright orange background on the outer to top portions of the cat
with a whited ground color on the undersides and insides. These beautiful
dramatic patterns, each of which is unique to the individual like a
fingerprint, are enhanced by the scatter of gold glitter over the top to
enrich the coat pattern even further.
This distinctive new breed of cat has other attributes than coat that help
it resemble the tigers of the wild. The long, deep rectangular body has the
low slung powerful look of the tiger along with big bones and high shoulders
that give the domestic Toyger the rolling gait of the large wild cats. Like
the tiger, the Toyger is a very muscular cat with a long inverted heart
shape to the face. These medium-sized, living room tiger replicas weigh in
at 10-15 pounds for the male and 7-10 pounds for the female. The Toyger will
capture your imagination as you watch it moving through your home in the
urban jungle that is its native habitat.
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